What global warming?

[Cornish Steve]

Here's a graph showing the rise of co2 in the past 50-60 years fro 305ppm to 395ppm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...their-highest-point-in-at-least-800000-years/

And the Economist, previously among one of the more alarmist publications on the topic of Global Warming, just published an article revealing that global temperatures over the last 15 years have been stagnant - despite a change in CO2 levels.

Phil: Another of my big gripes in this debate is my experience with forecasting models - both for near-term weather and long-time climate. During my PhD, I consumed 18 months of DEC-10 processing time and needed time on some of the big government Cray and Ciber machines to keep making progress. After many requests, I was eventually given an allotment of time on both. It turns out that by far the biggest users of these computers were the forecasters - yet their success rates were notoriously poor. Frankly, their models just couldn't take into account the very many factors that drive both weather and climate. Now, I understand we live in an age now with much more computer firepower, and models are more sophisticated; however, from those I know, there remains a lot of doubt and uncertainty in the field.

It's a very unfortunate and inconvenient fact that most models used to produce the famous hockey sticks over the last several years produce those graphs even with random input data. In other words, their starting assumptions lead to a predicted rise in temperatures no matter what the input data. Worse, the actual global temperatures witnessed in the last few years contradict all these models - as temperatures remain stagnant. That ought to tell us something.

Computer modeling is a difficult area of science. I remember once, when modeling fine particle magnets, predicting a peak in the specific heat. This generated a lot of excitement because it implied a new type of phase change. Thank goodness I ran the results past a brilliant colleague, because he spotted a problem in the modeling approach. I was wrong, the model was wrong, and double-checking against other data proved it. So, when actual data consistently fails to match predicted data, it's time to cross-check and re-evaluate.

 

[Top Hat]

And the Economist, previously among one of the more alarmist publications on the topic of Global Warming, just published an article revealing that global temperatures over the last 15 years have been stagnant - despite a change in CO2 levels.

Has global temperature remained stagnant over the past 15 years?

As already stated; I have read very little of the science, so I'm not qualified to argue the case, but am inclined to go with the scientific consensus.

 

[Top Hat]

Here's nasa's climate web site:
http://climate.nasa.gov/index

Probably been posted before, this is a big thread and I've not been paying attention.

And some lovely graphs here:
http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators

 

[Top Hat]

Has global temperature remained stagnant over the past 15 years?

(source NASA)

From the graph you can see that temps have not risen in the last 10 years, 15 years I think the trend is up.

Looking at the graph as a whole the trend is very definitely up, and to suggest that temperatures are stagnant or stable is intellectually dishonest.

May be in 5 - 10 years if temps have not started rising it would be justifiable to say temperatures were stagnant/stable.

 

[IANBOWDEN]

A great way for Governments to grab an extra 'green tax' from us without complaint. Whoever first though of that one was a genius.

 

[Cornish Steve]

(source NASA)

From the graph you can see that temps have not risen in the last 10 years, 15 years I think the trend is up.

Looking at the graph as a whole the trend is very definitely up, and to suggest that temperatures are stagnant or stable is intellectually dishonest.

May be in 5 - 10 years if temps have not started rising it would be justifiable to say temperatures were stagnant/stable.

We've rehashed this a lot. There are so many issues here. For example, looking at data over centuries instead of decades, it's clear that there are warming and cooling cycles. We're nowhere near the temperatures of ten centuries again when grapes were grown in 'Green'land. Also, the positioning of temperature gauges for many of these graphs has been located in cities, which tend to increase in temperature with size. The data yields no conclusive trend. For every graph I've seen that shows temperatures rising, I've seen graphs showing stability or even a drop in temperatures.

This field is crying out for objective research instead of government-funded projects designed to reach a predetermined conclusion. Sadly, I don't think it's ever going to happen. The field is much to politicized.

 

[Cornish Steve]

And let me go back to the data in this post. Did fossil fuels cause warming on Jupiter or Triton or Pluto? And why are sea levels falling in the Arctic and major oceans?

 

[Davek0974]

And why are sea levels falling in the Arctic and major oceans?

The penguins are drinking it

 

[Cornish Steve]

As an interesting piece of trivia, did you know that the word 'penguin' comes from the Cornish language? pen=head and gwyn=white, so a penguin is a 'white-head'.